In another display of clout that is likely to accelerate cost cutting throughout the state's health care system, the huge California Public Employees Retirement System said Wednesday that it has negotiated a 1.1% decrease in the cost of health insurance for 920,000 Californians. CalPERS, which negotiates health care on behalf of 910 public employers, has been cited by President Clinton and others as a national model for health care reform.

Reporting from San Quentin -- Fifteen years ago, Jackie Clark was so disgusted with the healthcare at San Quentin prison that she quit her job there as a nurse consultant. "We didn't have sinks. We didn't have appropriate medical equipment," she recalled recently. "We were in converted offices and converted cells. " The care there and elsewhere in California's overcrowded lockups was so poor that in 2006 a federal judge, saying that an inmate was dying unnecessarily every week, put a receiver in charge of the health system.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti said Tuesday that he hopes to rescue Los Angeles County's financially struggling trauma center network by pressing for legislation containing a $20-million appropriation for trauma centers statewide. "We would never get an override. We would like to see if we can get a bill passed," Roberti told reporters, outlining a plan to revive an appropriation for trauma centers that was knocked out of the budget last week by Gov. George Deukmejian.

In another display of clout that is likely to accelerate cost cutting throughout the state's health care system, the huge California Public Employees Retirement System said Wednesday that it has negotiated a 1.1% decrease in the cost of health insurance for 920,000 Californians. CalPERS, which negotiates health care on behalf of 910 public employers, has been cited by President Clinton and others as a national model for health care reform.

People who suffer from AIDS, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses will be able to purchase health insurance for the first time through a state-subsidized program under legislation signed Sunday by Gov. George Deukmejian. After years of vetoing similar bills, the governor approved a compromise catastrophic health insurance program that will rely on tobacco tax revenues to aid as many as 300,000 uninsured Californians who suffer from such long-term illnesses.

Reporting from San Quentin -- Fifteen years ago, Jackie Clark was so disgusted with the healthcare at San Quentin prison that she quit her job there as a nurse consultant. "We didn't have sinks. We didn't have appropriate medical equipment," she recalled recently. "We were in converted offices and converted cells. " The care there and elsewhere in California's overcrowded lockups was so poor that in 2006 a federal judge, saying that an inmate was dying unnecessarily every week, put a receiver in charge of the health system.

"Deaf to Health Fund Crisis" (editorial, Aug. 18), about California medical care, is appropriate. However, this is like shooting BB guns when The Times should be using guided missiles. I believe it to be the moral duty of all who have a public forum to harangue our lawmakers. A never-ending barrage should be used to make them realize there must be a national health program. Robert S. Ellison MD Arcadia Thank you for keeping before our eyes the approaching tsunami of closures and cutbacks in health-care services threatening all of us in L.A. County.

In a move that signals a change in the way health maintenance organizations deal with doctors and patients, PacifiCare Health Systems said Friday that it has signed long-term service contracts with almost all of its Southern California medical groups. The physician groups' pacts with PacifiCare of California run for at least five years, although the industry standard is for single-year contracts between HMOs and their medical care providers.

In a palimony award believed to be the largest ever made, an Orange County jury ruled Friday that flashlight mogul Anthony Maglica must pay $84 million to a woman he lived, worked and shared his name with for more than 20 years, but never married. The Superior Court jury determined that Maglica, 64, and his former companion, Claire Maglica, 60, had no oral or written agreement to equally share earnings from a former machine shop the couple successfully turned into Mag Instrument Inc.

Flight charts cover the living room floor of Ilse de Vries' Brentwood home these days. Every day, De Vries, 64, studies the route she plans to follow in her Beechcraft Bonanza in an around-the-world, Paris-to-Paris air race this summer. She will be the only woman flying a single-engine plane in the international competition for light aircraft. Eventually, she will cut up 12 charts to form a scroll, because there's no room in the plane to spread out a chart. There are other preparations.

People who suffer from AIDS, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses will be able to purchase health insurance for the first time through a state-subsidized program under legislation signed Sunday by Gov. George Deukmejian. After years of vetoing similar bills, the governor approved a compromise catastrophic health insurance program that will rely on tobacco tax revenues to aid as many as 300,000 uninsured Californians who suffer from such long-term illnesses.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti said Tuesday that he hopes to rescue Los Angeles County's financially struggling trauma center network by pressing for legislation containing a $20-million appropriation for trauma centers statewide. "We would never get an override. We would like to see if we can get a bill passed," Roberti told reporters, outlining a plan to revive an appropriation for trauma centers that was knocked out of the budget last week by Gov. George Deukmejian.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for another multibillion-dollar wave of borrowing Tuesday for new reservoirs, courthouses, classrooms and prison beds -- core public resources that, he said, are strained by California's growing population. In his annual State of the State speech, the governor laid out a plan for $43.3 billion in bonds over the next three years to pay for a round of public construction that would surpass what voters approved in the November election.

October 1, 1987 | GERALDINE DALLEK, Geraldine Dallek is a health-policy consultant based in Los Angeles. and

When it comes to helping the people of California obtain medical care, Gov. George Deukmejian gets a failing grade. It is well deserved. In the last legislative session the governor vetoed millions of dollars that would have provided health care for the working poor or uninsured, protected the state's troubled trauma system, boosted California's crumbling public hospitals, ensured that poor pregnant women get prenatal care, and funded AIDS health and education programs.